Australian Mining Symposium 1979

The Sydney Showground was the scene for a major international exhibition of mining and exploration equipment - AIMEX '79. In conjunction with this was held the Australian Mining Symposium, organized by Thomson Publications (Aust) Pty Ltd, and sponsored by the Australian Mining Industry Council. The symposium, entitled ‘Projections for the future in mining and exploration— political, economic and global’, included a number of papers of wide interest, with two or three papers of much narrower technical appeal. Proceedings of the symposium are to be published. Australian Mining Symposium, Sydney, February 1979.     

Australian mineral commodity marketing

Commodity export competitiveness is influenced by prices, costs, physical attributes of commodities, supply reliability and transportation. In the case of Australia, factors affecting such considerations include government export controls, environmental requirements, aboriginal rights and trade union attitudes. The author focuses on export control and the marketing of individual commodities, and emphasizes two issues of importance for the future - further processing before export and the future for long-term contracts.     

Australian junior exploration floats, 2001–06, and their implications for IPOs

An analysis of 179 junior exploration floats, listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) between July 2001 and June 2006, helped to build a basic understanding of the strategy and business structure of these companies. The “typical” junior explorer raised A$4 million at initial public offering (IPO) to finance a 2-year, mainly greenfields exploration program. The capital raised at IPO entitled its investors to approximately half of the company, with the balance in the hands of the promoters, vendors and/or seed capital investors. Of the A$4 million raised at IPO, it intended to spend approximately two-thirds on exploration, while the remainder was absorbed in corporate overheads and the costs of the IPO. Once these were paid, ongoing corporate overheads averaged approximately 28% of its total operational expenditure. However, given an average total annual expenditure of approximately A$2.6 million, most juniors held insufficient capital reserves to meet operational costs beyond a time frame of 2 years. As at October 2006, 9% of the companies were in the process of mine construction, whereas 6% had made it to producer status. The lead time from listing to production ranged from 1.5 to 53 months, giving a median of 28 months.     

Fiscal incentives for Australian bushland

The clearing of over 80% of the native vegetation from Australian agricultural areas has contributed significantly to the degradation classification applied to more than half this land. Soil erosion, siltation, and salinity damage continue to increase yearly. This situation not only threatens the productivity of the farm sector but has contributed to the estimated loss of 78 species of native flora, endangerment of an additional 2206 species, and the loss of 20 species of Australia's marsupials.Private returns diverge from social returns because the action (or inaction) of farmers has an impact upon others, both now and in the future. There is justification, therefore, for the public sector to intervene on behalf of society in an attempt to influence private decision making for the social good. This article argues for increased incentives from the public sector in Australia to encourage the voluntary cooperation of farmers to improve the balance between development and conservation. In contrast to the essentially temporary nature of man-made measures such as flood-mitigating capital works, increasing the area set aside to native bushland offers scope for the permanent stewardship of the resource—land.     

Sustainability,education and local government: insights from the Australian state of Victoria

Local government (LG) is increasingly playing a role in tackling environmental issues and promoting sustainability. An important element of this LG focus is sustainability education and engagement, yet only few details on the nature of these activities are evident. Similarly there is little understanding of the professional competencies required by LG staff to deliver the relevant sustainability education and engagement activities. A web-based survey of LG sustainability officers in the State of Victoria (Australia) provides insight into the focus of these officers’ work and the competencies they rely on. The findings seek to guide the training and employment of LG sustainability staff and the effective delivery of sustainability education and engagement activities. Broadly, the sustainability officers surveyed are closely involved with activities within their LG organisation, but are engaging less so with specific education institutions, organisational sectors and the community in general. In keeping with this, the major sustainability education and engagement focuses are collaboration with peers and stakeholders, rather than community-wide initiatives. For undertaking sustainability education and engagement activities, systems-thinking, anticipatory competence and normative competence were highlighted as important; however, strategic competence and interpersonal competence were considered most important.     

Australian gold exploration 1976–2003

The Australian gold industry has grown enormously over the past 25 years. Australian mine production of gold in 2003 was 284 t, similar to that of the USA, and behind South Africa, the world's largest gold-producing nation. Gold is Australia's third largest commodity export, worth an estimated A$5.3 billion in 2003–2004.Underpinning the industry is a solid resource base that has grown by successful exploration over the past three decades. Australia ranks third in the world after South Africa and the USA in terms of its economic gold resources. The growth in Australia's gold resources has been underpinned by high levels of exploration and innovations in gold processing technologies, specifically the development of carbon-based gold extraction methods that allowed commercial treatment of low grade ores. It has been supported by advances in gold exploration methods, especially exploration geochemistry.New resources were added at existing deposits and new deposits were found, including several of world class (>100 t contained gold), in each decade over the 25-year-period but resource growth since the 1990s has been dominated by brownfields additions rather than new discoveries. Average costs of discovery have now plateauxed at around A$20–25/oz, after falling sharply during the early to mid-1990s when a number of new discoveries were made, notably in the Yandal belt in Western Australia and the Lachlan Fold Belt in New South Wales. Current gold reserve/production and gold EDR/production ratios are 12 and 19 years, respectively, and indicate that the long-term future of the Australian gold industry depends on continued high levels of exploration and the discovery of new deposits to replace mines that are currently being depleted.     

Australian mineral export forecasts to 2000

Mineral exports are now about 35% of Australia's total export earnings. The authors consider the prospects to 2000 for the main export-earning commodities. Forecasts are arrived at using a variety of approaches, including regression analysis of time-series data, but the final assessment reflects specialists' personal judgments. It is argued that economic resources (reserves) already identified can, for most commodities, sustain forecast exports until the end of the century.     

Application of the Australian river bioassessment system (AUSRIVAS) in the Brantas River, East Java, Indonesia

Assessment of river 'health' using biological methods, particularly those based on macro-invertebrates, is now commonplace in most developed countries. However, this is not the case in most developing countries, where physical and chemical methods are used to assess water quality, with very little use of biological assessment methods. This paper reports on a project that aimed to assess the possible introduction of biological assessment of river condition using the Australian River Assessment System (AUSRIVAS) into Indonesia. The paper addresses three components of the project: (1) science--does the bioassessment method work in this tropical region? (2) resources--are they adequate and if not what additional resources are needed? (3) politics--what needs to be done to convince the agencies (both central and provincial) to take up such a new philosophy and approach? A pilot study was run in the upper Brantas River, East Java. A total of 66 reference sites and 15 test sites were sampled and the macro-invertebrates collected were identified to family level. A rigorous quality-control protocol was introduced to ensure the data were reliable and reproducible. The macro-invertebrate data were used to develop a predictive model of the AUSRIVAS type for the upper Brantas River, and the model was then used to assess the 'health' of sites that were presumed to be damaged in this section of the river. A number of difficulties were experienced during the study, including: locating reference sites sufficiently unmodified by humans; lack of skills to identify animals collected; and a paucity of facilities required for aquatic macro-invertebrate identification (e.g. identification keys and good quality binocular microscopes). For resources, the major constraint to the introduction of a bioassessment capability in Indonesia is the lack of personnel trained in the bioassessment techniques. An 'on-the-job' training approach was adopted, largely because of the specialist nature of this work. Six Indonesians were trained and will now become the 'trainers' of further Indonesian scientists (we have called this process 'training-the-trainers'). For politics, it was hoped that the AUSRIVAS method would be suitable for introduction into the Indonesian national Clean River Program. A strategy was developed and implemented to ensure the method and its outputs were accepted technically by the Indonesian scientific community, and also by the resource managers and relevant government officials. Experience shows that if the latter do not see how the bioassessment information will be used for management purposes they will not accept the method even if it is scientifically sound.     

Monitoring Diffuse Impacts: Australian Tourism Developments

/ The scientific quality of monitoring for diffuse environmental impacts has rarely been quantified. This paper presents an analysis of all formal environmental monitoring programs for Australian tourism developments over a 15-year period from 1980 to 1995. The tourism sector provides a good test bed for this study because tourism developments are (1) often adjacent to or even within conservation reserves and other relatively undisturbed natural environments, and (2) often clustered, with resulting cumulative impacts that require detection at an early stage. Here we analyze the precision and reliability with which monitoring programs as actually implemented can detect diffuse environmental impacts against natural variation. Of 175 Australian tourism developments subject to EIA from 1980 to 1993 inclusive, only 13 were subject to formal monitoring. Only 44 individual parameters, in total, were monitored for all these developments together. No baseline monitoring was conducted for nine of the 44 parameters. For the remaining 35, only one was monitored for a full year. Before, after, control, impact, paired sampling (BACIP) monitoring designs were used for 24 of the 44 parameters, and power analysis in 10. The scientific quality of monitoring was significantly better for developments subject to control by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA). The key factor appears to be the way in which GBRMPA uses external referees and manages external consultants. The GBRMPA model merits wider adoption.     

Sustainability in context: An Australian perspective

This article examines the concept of sustainability (sustainable development, sustainable societies) with a view to providing a means of considering the idea in such a way as to be more useful to concerns of policy. A brief background is given, covering the historical development of the concept, the constituent ecological and social concerns that lie behind it, and some aspects of the sustainability debate in Australia. Some attributes of a sustainable future, as evident from the literature, are listed. The value base of the concept is recognized, and the correct place for sustainability concerns is identified within a simple policy-making model. The complexity of such a model in the real world is explored using a list of thecontexts of sustainability, illustrated with examples from Australian natural resource management. Finally, the more dynamic and flexible nature of patterns of production and consumption in more sustainable societies is recognized and explained, as are two guiding directives to be applied in the search for models which display characteristics of sustainability.     

Pathways Towards Sustainability: The Australian Approach

Following its rise to international prominence, sustainability has become an official principle or goal in many countries. Due to contextual differences, countries have followed different paths in the pursuit of sustainability. Approachescan be classified into three categories: green planning; institutional reform; and social mobilization. None of these courses on its own is likely to achieve sustainability. Yet, countries often appear to develop a path dominated by one of these approaches. This paper focuses on Australia, sketches the extent to which green planning, institutional reform and social mobilization have been playing a role in the pursuit of sustainability, and illustrates the difficulties of developing a pathway that combines these approaches.     

Water resources exploitation in Australian prehistory environment

Summary People have been living on the Australian continent for at least 40 000 years, possibly longer. Many significant environmental changes in climate, flora and fauna have occurred during that period of human occupation. Availability of water has been a constant concern. It was sought after, of necessity, due to the fairly consistent low precipitation rate throughout the continent, both along the coast, as well as inland to the very arid, dry desert area. From earliest times, ingenious methods of water resources exploitation were practised. There are significant examples of fish and eel trap systems in western Victoria. Another important fish trap exists at Brewarrina, in New South Wales. Coastal fish traps are in existence along many suitable seaboard locations, from the east coast to the west. Water, retained in naturally occurring rock pools, was extensively exploited. An important source of water, particularly in the arid inland was from the so called native wells. These wells sustained a great number of the white explorers in the 1840s to 1880s, amongst them Ludwig Leichhardt and Ernest Giles. Some interesting native wells, in former Aboriginal occupation sites, have even been traced in the Simpson Desert. The construction of the hydraulic structures which have remained in existence were carried out using simple tools and limited materials. A culture existed with the technical sophistication, ingenuity and skills to satisfy the water needs of the people in the environment of an arid continent over several thousand years.Hans Bandler is both an Editorial Board member and a Civil and Environmental Engineering consultant.     

Australian natural resources policy: Water and land

This paper reviews the significance of water/soils management problems as they are perceived, identified or acted upon by a range of institutions in Australian society. Reference is made to state/Commonwealth perspectives or land degradation, the fragmented responsibility in institutional arrangements and the political aspects of current land use planning issues. There is a lack of broad consensus on environmental problems and how to solve them. Emergent issues in water planning include the increasing importance of environmental river flows, urban water demand management, and the sunderstanding of the changing mechanisms of water allocation. The importance of scientific knowledge in natural resource agency decision making is found contentious in view of the varying roles of technical experts in organizations and the base line of political expediency. Requirements of effective policy making and monitoring of implementation highlight some of the ‘intractable’ problems in water and land management.